Obamacare's enrollment problems are worse than you thought

“Insurers say the federal health care marketplace is generating flawed data that is straining their ability to handle even the trickle of enrollees who have gotten through so far, in a sign that technological problems extend further than the website traffic and software issues already identified,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

Emerging errors “include duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children, missing data fields and suspect eligibility determinations, say executives at more than a dozen health plans,” according to the story.

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska, for instance, had to hire temporary workers to contact new customers directly to resolve inaccuracies in submissions. Cleveland-based Medical Mutual of Ohio “said one customer had successfully signed up for three of its plans.”

Yep, one.

The Journal says the flaws “could do lasting damage to the law if customers are deterred from signing up or mistakenly believe they have obtained coverage.”

This and that

Looking to the future: Rebecca O. Bagley, president and CEO of nonprofit economic development group NorTech, is in well-credentialed company with her appointment to the manufacturing commission of the University of Virginia's Howard P. Milstein Symposium.

The Milstein Symposium was launched by the Miller Center, a nonpartisan affiliate of the University of Virginia that specializes in presidential scholarship, public policy and political history. In a news release, NorTech described the symposium as “a five-year initiative advancing innovative, action-oriented ideas to help rebuild the American Dream.”

The Miller Center will convene three Milstein commissions each year. They will “bring together policymakers, government officials, business leaders, scholars, advocates, social entrepreneurs, media representatives and other stakeholders necessary to achieve broad support,” according to NorTech.

Ms. Bagley will serve on a 12-member commission co-chaired by former U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana, and former Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Mississippi.

Also on the commission are John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable and former governor of Michigan; and James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic.

Wait for it:Here's some fallout from the government shutdown that you might not have expected.

“Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland warned that the shutdown could have an impact on the accuracy of the monthly consumer price index estimates until next May,” Reuters reports.

"Since the CPI price collection relies upon field staff visiting shops, some of the October data will never be collected," says Randal Verbrugge, a senior research economist at the Cleveland Fed. "As a result, the November CPI release, which is based upon October data, will have a much bigger standard error due to the smaller sample."

Given that not all prices are collected every month, “the error will not be quickly reversed,” the news service reports.

"In fact, these repercussions do not end until May of 2014," Mr. Verbrugge says. "However, year-over-year inflation estimates will continue to be quite reliable."

John Oreovicz says his trip to a new IndyCar series event in Houston “made me reminisce about Cleveland, and Road America, and Michigan, and Phoenix, and a couple of other tracks that really ought to be on the modern Indy car schedule.”

IndyCar is racing in Houston because “the money was there for it to do it,” he writes. “Shell Oil is headquartered in Houston, and it wanted a race in its hometown. Voilą!”

But he adds, “I couldn't help but wish that Shell, or a similar company, would spend its sponsorship dollars at a more enjoyable venue for the participants and spectators. Like Road America. Or Portland. Or Cleveland.”

It turns out Houston promoter Mike Lanigan “also owns the rights to stage an Indy car race in Cleveland,” according to Mr. Oreovicz. “But while Lanigan can't find the sponsorship to revive the popular Cleveland race (it was run from 1982 to 2006), the money dropped into his lap for the reviled Houston.”

Unlike the Houston course, “Cleveland is the rare example of a temporary track that really works,” Mr. Oreovicz writes. “The unique Burke Lakefront Airport circuit creates exciting racing, and the entire track is visible from the grandstands, which is a rare treat in road racing. And only a small portion of the track is constrained by the walls and fences that are always a potential threat for drivers and cars.”

“Honestly, no one born after 1950 should care about getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” he writes. It's a museum to a dead genre — not rock, but 'Rock and Roll' as defined by the sort of people who find the lyrics to 'American Pie' really meaningful. It's always had toxic racial politics, recognizing white artists who co-opted black music (often without credit or recompense) before it recognized the artists who originally created the music.”

He's not done.

The museum “exults mediocrities like the Doors and thieves like Led Zeppelin,” as Mr. Pereene sees it. “It's a perfect monument for an industry defined by suits getting rich off the work and creativity of artists, and for a generation that still thinks its style of dress and choice of loud music was a revolutionary act.”

He concludes: “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a very silly place run by very silly people. So, no, I don't care if the Replacements don't make it, and I also don't care if they do. The Hall wants to be what it is — the world's largest and most lavish tribute to Eric Clapton — and that's fine. Let the old men have their monument to how much cooler stuff was back then.”

Have lunch plans? Sorry, fans of Cincinnati chili. Ohio has the worst signature food in the country, according to this ranking from Deadspin.com.

“Each state (plus the District of Columbia) gets one, and only one, signature foodstuff,” according to the story. “And we selected actual food preparations; no state gets credit merely for being the geographic location where a certain edible flora or fauna happens to grow or swim or graze.”

The rankings are snarky and fun to read. The top three picks are Chicago-style deep-dish pizza (Illinois), shrimp and grits (South Carolina) and the Mission-style burrito (California).

You have to go all the way down to No. 51 for Ohio's entry, which begins this way:

For the mercifully unacquainted, "Cincinnati chili," the worst regional foodstuff in America or anywhere else, is a horrifying diarrhea sludge (most commonly encountered in the guise of the "Skyline" brand) that Ohioans slop across plain spaghetti noodles and hot dogs as a way to make the rest of us feel grateful that our own shit-eating is (mostly) figurative. The only thing "chili" about it is the shiver that goes down your spine when you watch Ohio sports fans shoveling it into their maws on television and are forced to reckon with the cold reality that, for as desperately as you might cling to faltering notions of community and universality, ultimately your fellow human beings are as foreign and unknowable to you as the surface of Pluto, and you are alone and always have been and will die alone, a world unto yourself unmarked and unmapped and totally, hopelessly isolated.

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